Samsung mass producing new MacBook Air SSDs for other notebooks

Samsung's PCIe SSDs more than twice as fast as SATA SSDs

Announced last week during WWDC 2013, Apple's new MacBook Air will make use of a new solid state drive from Samsung.

The MacBook Air will be available with new Haswell chips, and will be offered with either a 128GB XP941 SSD or a 256GB version.

However, Samsung is not exclusively creating the XP941 SSD for the MacBook Air. In fact, the Korean manufacturer announced plans on Monday to mass produce the drives for plenty of other vendors.

There will be three versions available, with a 512GB version joining the aforementioned SSDs being used in the new MacBook Air.

Smaller, faster, better, stronger

As the first PCI-Express (PCIe) SSD, the XP941 is not only smaller than other current SATA SSDs, it's also faster.

The diminutive stature of the XP941 is what enabled Apple to improve the MacBook Air's battery life without ditching storage space.

According to Samsung, the new SSD can read 500GB of data in six minutes, which puts it at nearly seven times faster than a standard hard drive, and 2.5 times faster than a SATA SSD.

"With the Samsung XP941, we have become the first to provide the highest performance PCIe SSD to global PC makers so that they can launch leading-edge ultra-slim notebook PCs this year," Young-Hyun Jun, executive vice president for memory sales and marketing at Samsung Electronics, said in a statement.

To get on-the-spot news, app tips and the full lowdown on Samsung's latest mobile announcements check out Samsung's Your Mobile Life on TechRadar.

Samsung hasn't revealed which other companies will carry the new SSDs, but did say some manufacturers have already received them, with more coming as the year rolls on.

In addition to new SSDs the MacBook Air will soon have the new OS X 10.9 Mavericks . Take a look at when you'll get it.